Generally described, companies and organizations operate computer networks that interconnect numerous computing systems to support their operations. The computing systems can be located in a single geographical location (e.g., as part of a local network) or located in multiple distinct geographical locations (e.g., connected via one or more private or public intermediate networks). Data centers may house significant numbers of interconnected computing systems, such as, for example, private data centers operated by a single organization and public data centers operated by third parties to provide computing resources to customers. Public and private data centers may provide network access, power, hardware resources (e.g., computing and storage), and secure installation facilities for hardware owned by the data center, by an organization, or by other customers.
To facilitate increased use of data center resources, virtualization technologies may allow a single, physical computing machine to host one or more instances of virtual machines that appear and operate as independent computer machines to a connected computer user. With virtualization, the single physical computing device can create, maintain, or delete virtual machines in a dynamic manner. In turn, users can request computer resources from a data center and be provided with varying numbers of virtual machine resources on an “as needed” basis, or at least on an “as requested” basis.
In some circumstances, customers may also have production infrastructure that implement various workflows or other processes. The production infrastructure can include physical computing resources, such as central processing units (CPUs), storage media, memories, network interfaces, etc. that are maintained by the customer or on behalf of a customer. Additionally, such computing resources may include unique or uncommon resources, or resource configurations, or otherwise be associated with computing resources that are not easily replicated in a network-based environment. For example, production computing resources may include an operating system or an operating system version that is no longer available/supported or otherwise may not be capable of being implemented in a hosted network environment. In another example, production computing resources can also include custom components, e.g., hardware memory resources that would be more difficult to replicate exactly in a hosted network environment.